AT&T relaunching Cricket brand during Q2 2014

We’ve already seen talk about how AT&T’s Aio brand was going to be folded into Cricket Wireless. And now it looks like AT&T has plans to relaunch the Cricket Wireless brand during the second quarter of the year. Naturally, this all comes as the $1.2 billion acquisition was completed back in March.

Speaking during the recent earnings conference call, CFO John Stephens said AT&T will be giving Cricket a “national presence” and they will be “aggressive.” The national push will include 3,000 locations around the country and they will be focusing on affordable devices and simple plans. Interestingly, Stephens also mentioned that roughly 70 percent of new Cricket customers choose a smartphone.

There was also some talk about how they will be transitioning the Cricket customers to the AT&T network — and it looks like the carrier may have found a use for the devices being traded in under the Next program. Fierce Wireless mentioned that AT&T has plans to pass those devices over to Cricket customers.

“It could be very opportunistic for us if we’re able to figure out away to take our Next program trade-in and provide those kind of quality handsets to our prepaid customers, not only elevate the cost, but give them a real quality experience,”

While the relaunch is set to begin in the second quarter, and there appears to be a plan to get GSM capable devices in the hands of Cricket users — it doesn’t appear the transition will be quick. AT&T had mentioned a timeline of 18 months. And if all this sounds a bit familiar, that is because we have been watching T-Mobile go through a similar transition process with MetroPCS.